SEQUIM — Jennie Webber-Heilman remembers Port Townsend’s new volleyball coach well. . . as a player.
Nettie Witheridge, after all, was one of the many athletes Webber-Heilman’s Sequim Wolves have faced during her extended coaching tenure.
Now Witheridge is one of the many coaches Webber-Heilman has matched lineups with in her 20 years at Sequim, 16 as the varsity’s head honcho.
The shelf life for high school coaches on the North Olympic Peninsula tends to be brief, no matter the sport. And volleyball is certainly no different, with seven of the Peninsula’s nine varsity programs led by coaches that have been around three years or less.
Yet as the Peninsula’s dean of coaches enters her 21st season with Wolves volleyball, the only thing that’s changed for Sequim is the players.
A few hard years
“There’s been years where it’s been hard just with various problems, kids getting injured, or kids moving away, or parents that weren’t always understanding,” said Webber-Heilman, a former Port Angeles and Peninsula College volleyball player herself.
“But for the most part it’s been a pretty good job. And a lot of it has to do with the school. If we’re doing our job, then they are willing to let us coach and take care of that part. They kind of head off all the other problems.”
The North Olympic Peninsula’s dean of volleyball coaches hasn’t had too many of those at Sequim.
Webber-Heilman’s teams have yet to log one losing season during her time as head coach, and have visited the state tournament five times in the last 12 years.
That last mark is tops among each of the Peninsula’s programs. (Forks, Port Townsend, Crescent and Neah Bay each have four state appearances during that time frame.)
It’s that sort of success that gets players to buy in, according to senior outside hitter Caitlin Pallai.
“She has a good reputation, and it’s a solid program,” she said. “I think it’s really structured and she’s been with Sequim a really long time. It’s effective what she does.”
Webber-Heilman estimates more than a dozen of her players have moved on to play volleyball in college.
That list includes former All-State selection Lisa Fryer, who played four years for the North Carolina Tar Heels in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Sequim volleyball isn’t about making stars, however.
Rather, the reason for the program’s success comes from a strict focus on team, Webber-Heilman said.
So even as players come and go, and their interests evolve, the Wolves are still a team to be reckoned with year in and year out.
“Kids have changed a lot,” said Webber-Heilman, who was originally hired by the late Rick Kaps in 1989.
“There’s so much for kids to do that they have a lot of choices, and it’s hard for them to commit to one thing. It’s hard to get the team culture ingrained in kids now. . . it’s kind of an individual thing.
“That’s something that we really work hard on with our team, is to make sure it’s our team. It’s not this girl, and this girl and this girl.
“Our JV team members are just as important as our varsity members. We’re together.”
To think, Webber-Heilman could have been a Roughrider coach this whole time.
She applied for a job at her alma mater before joining Sequim’s staff but was rejected due to the district policy of hiring only teachers for coaching positions at the time.
All these years later she’s still at Sequim, and Port Angeles is coached by Christine Halberg, who also doesn’t teach. The two play together on an over-35 women’s volleyball team.
And every now and then, Webber-Heilman runs across a former Sequim player still digging serves or slamming kills at a tournament.
Some even coach at high schools across the state.
“It’s nice when you see people stick with it . . . that volleyball wasn’t so terrible,” she said.
For the past 20 years, that’s often been the case.